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Happy New Year!

Happy new year! Feliz año nuevo! Gelukkige nuwe jaar! Bonne année! Frohes neues Jahr! An nou fericit! С новым годом! 新年快乐!

Image credit: Women Deliver

It's a simple fact of the holiday season: Christmas isn't about a tree, or presents, or family. Christmas is about Mariah Carey.

The science: In a 2007 study of our brains, researchers examined how people felt while listening to excerpts of popular music they had heard in the past. If a song was playing during any big first — a kiss, a college party — that song will later cause certain brain regions, including the medial prefrontal cortex, which is integral for retrieval of long-term memories, to light up, essentially transporting you back to that moment.

Essentially, the science suggests that "All I Want for Christmas," or any other holiday music, may make our brains high on nostalgia.

"Music is such a strong stimulus," said Megha Sharda, a researcher at the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research at the University of Montreal. "Most people have positive associations with holiday music ... so when you hear it, the brain releases hormones that give us pleasure, same as when we eat chocolate, which reinforces the memory, making the positive association stronger.”

Christmas music may also spark positive feelings based on experiences burned into our brains that we don't consciously remember. In a 2013 study, psychologists discovered that people preferred music that was popular when they came of age and music from their parents' heyday, which was probably playing during happy moments in participants' childhoods, even if they didn’t explicitly recall it.

As Pacific Standard reported, "The researchers report that the presence of personal memories associated with specific songs was 'closely related to whether they made participants feel happy or energized.' This suggests we're not responding so much to the music per se, but rather to the events and feelings it triggers in our brains."


Once you feel connected to a song, hearing it more only intensifies the love. Songs we like activate the brain's "default-mode network," which is involved in self-aware, "mind-wandering" thinking, like imagining the future. But listening to our favorite songs, according to a study recently published in Nature, has the added effect of increasing connectivity between sound-processing regions and the hippocampus, which is involved in memory and social emotion. Basically, songs we like provoke thoughts, but songs we love also give us the feels.

Furthermore, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" may excite our brains in large part because we know every word of the song. Neuroscience research shows that we get more pleasure from familiar songs than unfamiliar songs (whether or not we claim to like them). In a 2011 study of self-described "music lovers," cognitive scientists from Johns Hopkins University used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to observe neural responses to popular songs. Hearing familiar songs sparked activity in the reward networks and emotional processing areas of participants' brains, regardless of their opinions of the songs.


The nostalgic high we get, paired with the increasing joy we feel every time the song floods our ears, points to one thing: "All I Want for Christmas Is You" isn't going anywhere, and you're going to be absolutely fine with it.

Source: Mic.com

New Dawn

'Gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, if not more so,' says McGowan.

UPDATE: Rose McGowan has taken to Twitter to apologize for her earlier comment that the gay community has “fought for the right to stand on top of a float wearing an orange speedo and take molly [MDMA].”

“I was pissed off when I said that, obvs a gross over generalization, for which I apologize. But my point stands,” she tweeted. “Could have articulated my frustration in a better fashion? Undoubtedly. For that I apologize, but I stand by the overall point.”  

Rose McGowan claimed gay men are more “misogynistic” than straight men and said she was “really upset” that the gay community wasn’t campaigning harder for women’s rights, reports Pink News.

The actress recently sounded off during a conversation with gay author Bret Easton Ellis in his weekly podcast as the two were discussing the boycott the Brunei-owned Dorchester Hotel collection

Owned by the Sultan of Brunei, the Dorchester Collection came under fire shortly after the Sultan implemented a change to the country’s penal code that was scheduled to come into effect on April 22, 2014 and could make homosexuality punishable by stoning to death.

Ellis kicked off the conversation by claiming the boycott only harmed “the people who simply work at the hotel” and was based on “illusionary and tenuous” reports about the Sharia law. He also categorized the boycott as a “form of narcissistic, self-victimisation, gay insanity.”

McGowan added that those who boycotted were “delusional idiots” and criticized them for failing to campaign against the abuse of women in Arab states as well.

“Gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, if not more so,” she said. “I have an indictment of the gay community right now, I’m actually really upset with them.”

McGowan continued, explaining the reason she held a party defying the boycott this summer in a Brunei-owned Beverly Hills hotel.

“You wanna talk about the fact that I have heard nobody in the gay community, no gay males, standing up for women on any level?” she said.

She continued lashing out at the gay community, saying: “There is Sharia law active in Saudi Arabia, there’s a woman who’s about to be stoned – I have not heard [AIDS activist] Cleve Jones discuss her, and nor will he.”

“I think it’s what happens to you as a group when you are starting to get most of what you fought for? What do you do now?”

“What I would hope they would do is extend a hand to women.”

“Women, by-and-large, have very much helped the gay community get to where they are today.”

“And I have seen not a single peep from these people, who supposedly represent lesbians as well… when the equal pay act was shut down by Republicans in the Senate, not a single man mentioned that.”

“I see now people who have basically fought for the right to stand on top of a float wearing an orange speedo and take molly [MDMA].”

“[Gay misogyny] is a huge problem.”

Source: The Advocate

Rose McGowan attending  "Dawn" premiere at Downtown Independent theater on September 19 in Los Angeles.

The “Grindhouse” actress said directing the short film “Dawn” will launch the next phase of her career

For some, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone is a career pinnacle, a childhood fantasy attained. For Rose McGowan, a suggestive pose on a 2007 issue of the iconic magazine was a wakeup call.

“I just had this bouffant hairdo, this big bubble hairdo, this weird Photoshopped forehead that they gave me — I don't know why exactly, because my forehead was fine, last I checked — and this dark fake tan, and I'm chest-to-chest with Rosario Dawson and an ammo belt around my hip was the only clothing I had on,” McGowan remembered in a conversation with TheWrap on Monday. ”And I was like, Who is that?”

The trouble wasn't so much just that those specific photographers and designers at that specific magazine had put them in a less-than-comfortable pose (to promote Grindhouse), but that the cover represented everything that she had come to hate about her career and industry.

“It's always part and parcel of it, you're expected as a woman, this is what you trade off of, this is how you sell tickets to the movies, this is your part of it,” she rattled off, regretting the state of the business. “Your job as a promoter is this: They're not sticking a guy on the cover doing it, unless it's like Seth Rogen doing a joke. So as a woman I'm expected to sell myself, my body, my image, my sexuality, in order to get your ticket sales up. It's kind of fucked up. And it's like, wait, I wasn't aware that when I signed on to act, I had to sell myself that much.”

And so McGowan retreated from Hollywood, more or less, taking time to travel and study and appearing in fewer projects (most notably an arc in Nip/Tuck and a supporting role in Conan the Barbarian in 2009). During this time, she says, she found both her true self and her true passion, which together led to her directorial debut on the short film Dawn.

A 1961-set story about a teenage girl lured into danger by older kids with bright smiles and dark intentions, Dawn is a lush, impressive debut, and one that McGowan says will launch the next phase of her career.

TheWrap: You've been in the industry for most of your life, so when did you decide that you wanted to direct?
McGowan: I think it just actually came out of the writers, who are my friends, it came from an outside source, instead of an internal source, and then it all just clicked. And all my years of frustration, I was like oh, I can actually do something about this.

It seems like we're in both a permission-based industry, and also the sense that you can go do it yourself because things aren't as expensive to make. There's a weird split there.
McGowan: There is a big schism in this industry; if you're on the actor's side, it's like, here is what you're allowed to do, or what we're gonna let you do, and maybe you'll get this, and maybe you won't. Where the other side of this is just, go be a maverick and just do it yourself, which as it turns out, is more in line with my process.

How long did it take you to shoot?
McGowan: It was a four-day shoot, but pro-rated, if it was a full feature, it probably would have been about 30. Budget-wise, it was a big undertaking. We had water tankers on set, it had to go with us through the forest when we were driving… It was pretty intensive, but I handled things very well. I always have, I've just never really gotten the credit for it.

I read that this story was loosely based on your mother, in some way? Why did you connect with the story?
McGowan: I connected with it because of my mother, it wasn't loosely based on her. It was a study of those kind of themes, obviously anything story-wise, no, but the maternal influence was very much there.

The struggle of women throughout the ages have been legend. And they still go on. Dawn, set in 1961, has a lot of parallels to today. It's a little more subtle now, but [sexism] is still endemic in the world and in our culture.

This summer, it seems to come to light more than ever, maybe it's finally just being exposed a little bit, even with the NFL, what's happening there.
McGowan: Exactly, and it's like, Jesus, really? It's taken this much time? But at least it's getting there. But like, really? It just gets so boring. That part for me is that it just gets so boring. All of these like, it's the same treatment of women throughout the ages, we haven't moved on yet, people?

Does it seem like we're having this conversation more this summer?
McGowan: For me, if I was going to think about it, I would say that it's probably something akin to people feeling like we've moved on, we're now a more civilized society, but it's just a veneer. The true problems are all still there. You don't discuss them. You don't discuss the fact that violence against women is so huge in this problem. All those gun statistics deaths, besides for inner-cities, it's women, that's who's getting killed. I was in Colorado doing a movie and every day in the newspaper, it was like, “Woman gets killed by her ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, etc.” and you're like ugh.

And imagine what a good old boys [club] the NFL must be. What a nightmare. I thank god I'm not a football player every day.

At least they're finally feeling some heat.
McGowan: At least they finally are. And they'll feeling heat from people who are thinking, progressive males, which is heartening.

I'm always torn because making the topic of an interview that someone is a woman director is putting an asterisk on the work they've made, you must be sick of it.
McGowan: It's just like female comedians. It's a gender-neutral position. It makes me a little bit crazy.

But at the same time, the numbers are pretty terrible, so if you don't talk about it…
McGowan: Oh, they're horrifying. Believe me, the NFL might have nothing on us.

So do you get annoyed by those questions? Do you feel they're annoying but essential?
McGowan: It's really tricky, because it sets you up in a way that, as a woman answering it, you're bound and you have duct tape across your mouth, and if you say something, it's like, you're just another woman harping on… but it's like no, it's just reality. I'm not a woman harping on anything. It's just a fact. I wish it weren't a fact. I would love to never talk about that again, wouldn't that be exciting, wouldn't it be exciting just to talk about work? How great would that be? So freeing, because that's what it's about.

The last I heard, the sex I was born didn't really come into play with what I'm doing, other than to other people. I didn't check with myself that morning and say, as a woman director, I wonder how I'm going to approach this scene? Do you know how silly that sounds?

But the statistics are so grim, and so I'm going to do something about that. And I think it's time.

Do you have plans to direct a feature? Is that the next thing in your career?
McGowan: Yeah, absolutely. I'm in negotiations for two right now. One's a big one, and one is a more indie one. This is what I love, I've finally really, really, really found my passion, more than anything.

So people see the short and say oh wow, we have to take her seriously as a director now!
McGowan: Basically yes. As an actor, you're not taken seriously because you're given the roles you're “allowed” to be given, and you're trying to make a living, you're trying to survive and you're trying to do this so you take the best of what is out there. In my case, it was a bit of a Jessica Rabbit case in the past, where it's like, “I'm not that, I'm just drawn this way,” where my brain is very different. But because of what I look like, I got stuck doing a lot of certain things that didn't necessarily go in line with how I think.

Do you think that now that you've entered this new phase, can you find acting roles that are more suited to your thought process and personality?
McGowan: Absolutely. I literally just signed on to two movies to act in and again, I think it's what you put out in the universe maybe to an extent is what you get back. Things rise up to meet you. The two movies that I'm in negotiations to act in are very very different than anything I've really done before. Just not trading on any physical aspect of anything. One is a goofy trio of people that hunts for ghosts, so it's kind of idiots, basically. A trio of idiots. And that's a comedy. And one is just a psychological drama about this woman and her husband whose life gets torn about by someone having false memories or maybe real memories of the husband committing a crime. So their life just gets dismantles. It's cool, it's stuff with some meat on it.

Source: TheWrap

Actress visits Toronto to promote awareness campaign called Kiss IPF Goodbye after the progressive and fatal disease killed her father

U.S. actress Rose McGowan, who starred in the TV show Charmed, is in Toronto to promote an awareness campaign for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that killed her father.

Rose McGowan remembers the exact words a doctor used to deliver devastating news to her father.

“I was with him in the hospital when the doctor shook his hand and said ‘I’m so sorry, because there’s really nothing I can do,’ ” recalls the actress, known for her lead role on TV’s Charmed.

He was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a mostly untreatable lung disease, with unknown origins, which causes scarring that make it increasingly difficult to breathe.

A lucky few get lung transplants, but almost all die. In Canada there is only one drug with Health Canada approval, while another is under review. There are no approved drugs in the U.S.

Since losing her dad nearly five years ago, McGowan has tried to spread the word about this disease, which typically is misdiagnosed for months as asthma, pneumonia or heart failure. Symptoms include restlessness, a dry cough and blue lips.

Though it hits mostly older people, the disease does not discriminate. Canadians know about Ottawa’s Hélène Campbell, whose need for a lung transplant in 2012 created a global awareness campaign about the needs for organ donations. She was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at age 20, after being told for months that her problem was asthma.

“That’s the scary and hard thing,” McGowan says. “You are fighting an enemy in the dark basically, because you don’t know why your body is being attacked.”

McGowan has teamed up with the Canadian Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation and is in Toronto Thursday to meet with patients and bring attention to the organization’s Kiss IPF Goodbye campaign.

For every share of their videos on Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #kissIPFgoodbye, pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim will donate $5 to the organization for research.

A pair of blue lips on the website will slowly turn red as donations come in, says CPFF president Robert Davidson, who began the organization in 2009, after a lung transplant stopped the disease from ending his life.

About 5,000 Canadians die of pulmonary fibrosis each year.

“It’s the awareness that’s so important,” he says. “The more awareness we can create, the more people will go to their doctors and get an early diagnosis and get whatever treatments are available.”

An earlier diagnosis may also allow patients and their families more meaningful time to obtain resources and support.

“The disease that killed my dad kills so many people,” McGowan says. “It’s a horrible disease to die from. It’s a horrible, hard thing to watch.”

To see videos, read patient stories and watch the blue lips turn red, go to www.cpff.ca.

Source: TheStar.com

"Dawn" will be playing for a week in L.A. along with female-driven films picked by the director 

ShortBeat is a weekly round-up of news from the world of short filmmaking, spotlighting up-and-coming talent and some of the best content on the web.

When Rose McGowan’s short-film directorial debut Dawn premiered at Sundance this winter it took many by surprise. It didn’t look like the work of someone who had been acting since she was a teenager (TV’s Charmed, Grindhouse, The Black Dahlia), but rather the work of a cinephile who had spent a lifetime feasting on the classics.

"I am a big film and art buff, I think better films would be made if more people were," McGowan tells The Hollywood Reporter. "My three inspirations for Dawn were the look of the original Parent Trap, the tension of Night of the Hunter and the loneliness of an Edward Hopper painting."

The highly stylized short, set in Kennedy-era America, tells the story of Dawn (Tara Barr), a teenager living a sheltered existence. When a hunky and mysterious gas station attendant (Reiley McClendon) innocently flirts with Dawn, the door to all her teenage dreams swings open. What follows is not your typical story of sexual awakening, but rather a surprisingly twisty film of heightened reality that could best be described as Douglas Sirk-meets-David Lynch.

After generating some acclaim for Dawn earlier this year, McGowan is now hoping the film can nab an Academy Award nomination. To qualify for best short it must be publicly exhibited for paid admission in Los Angeles for three consecutive days, but McGowan has decided to turn her qualifying run into a week long “Dawn Festival” and will be setting up residency at the Downtown Independent on Sept 19.

For seven nights, Dawn will be accompanied by a movie picked by McGowan. According to a statement, the films were chosen because they “feature iconic performances by actresses that prove rich, complex and layered roles can and should be written for and by women.” The films will screen with McGowan and special guests in attendance.

For the former Charmed actress, Dawn and its Oscar run are her first steps towards directing features. "I have three features in the works right now," McGowan tells THR. "Two are in rewrites. One is a bigger film, one smaller. After conservatively estimating my time on sets at over 17,000 hours, I’m more than ready."

Here’s the full "Dawn Festival" lineup, along with McGowan’s reasoning for picking each film:

Safe: "Todd Haynes directed Julianne Moore in a haunting study of a woman's life."

Thelma & Louise: "Ridley Scott directed two substantial actresses in two substantial, inspiring roles."

Harold and Maude: "Hal Ashby directed Ruth Gordon. Two creatives on a creative journey."

Sixteen Candles: "John Hughes directed Molly Ringwald. He made a teen's hopes and hurts real."

Rosemary’s Baby: "Roman Polanski directed Mia Farrow in a virtuoso breakdown performance."

Silkwood: "Mike Nichols directed Meryl Streep and Cher. They showed us women can change the world by finding their voice."

The Silence of the Lambs: "Jonathan Demme directed Jodie Foster. She showed us what a person can do when they go forward despite their fear."

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Kiss Me Once (2014)

Kiss Me Once is available now on iTunes!

Rose McGowan photographed by Jessie Askinazi.

Rose McGowan does not follow the typical blueprint for Hollywood starlets. Her silent-siren beauty aside, the outspoken actress drives faster than most men we know and scarfed down eggs, bacon, and biscuits before our photo shoot. McGowan is someone who genuinely does what she wants, and doesn’t sugarcoat or falsify her intentions. As an actress, McGowan has established herself as a cult icon, with roles in fanboy favorites like Scream, Grindhouse, and the TV show Charmed. But her latest role is as filmmaker, with her directorial debut, Dawn, debuting last January at the Sundance Film Festival. A short film about girl culture in the 1960s, Dawn is McGowan’s purest attempt at expressing her artistic vision. We spoke to her recently about this new chapter in her career.

Can you describe the world that Dawn has been exposed to and how that relates to the feminist undertones in the film?
Setting Dawn in 1961 allowed me to examine the pretty straight jacket that girls were raised to exist in. The post-war ideal of femininity both fascinates and horrifies me. I realized I could say a lot about that by making a study of Dawn’s repression.

How do you feel that your experience as an actress in Hollywood has influenced your transition into directing- specifically regarding the projects you’ll take on?
Everything relates. It’s a special trick of the mind to think that we are only allowed to be or do one thing. Acting is an art, but I wasn’t feeling like an artist. To be a frustrated artist is a special kind of torture. I am now very comfortable having my own voice. I know what I will and won’t do as a director and I learned that from being an actress.

When you read the script for Dawn, how did you identify? Why was this the first project that made you go, “Okay, I’m ready now.”
I was lucky, the writers, M.A. Fortin and Joshua Miller are brilliant friends of mine. I think they’d seen me mentally withering on the vine, so to speak. They are actually the ones who said, “it’s time.” And it is.

Rose McGowan photographed by Jessie Askinazi.

How do you think girl culture in the 1960s echoes how women are viewed or treated in our society today?
I think it’s pretty easy to see the parallels in today’s life. It’s up to us to reject those notions.

In an interview you gave with Entertainment Weekly, you mentioned how “your internal warning can get subverted by societal influences”. How has this translated in your own life, and what did you hope to highlight through your artistic interpretation of this notion?
This article is not long enough to list the mistakes I’ve made by ignoring my internal warning system. As humans we are hardwired to have a fight or flight response. As women we are taught to repress it.

Rose McGowan photographed by Jessie Askinazi.

It was interesting how Dawn’s naiveté, which was largely due to her conditioning by her mother, caused her infatuations to be men such as Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter (who were closeted gay actors at the time). What were you trying to convey about masculinity – and the sheltered feminine ideals?
I wanted Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson to be Dawn’s barometer of masculinity. Unfortunately, it was a hyper-idealized, consumer friendly idea of masculinity that further served to reinforce stereotypes. The Tab Hunter interview that Dawn reads to gain insight into the male mind, is a real interview. “I like girls that ask questions, but not too many questions.” Well, Tab says a mouthful with that quote.

I’m interested in your role as a movie buff. I know you’re extremely interested in the narrative, and have studied and been exposed to filmmaking since you were a child.  What are the new challenges you face behind the camera?
Just getting behind the camera and staying there for the long haul. It’s the only way to keep learning.

Rose McGowan photographed by Jessie Askinazi.

Source: Bullett Media

The inimitable actor in The Doom Generation and Jawbreaker plonks down in the director's chair for her first short, Dawn

15 years after Jawbreaker, the teen-dream killer and director discuss its killer legacy

Rose McGowan casting polaroid. (Courtesy of Darren Stein)

The "Flawless Four" carrying Liz's dead body. (Courtesy of Darren Stein)